Certain miniature lamps include, as part of their glass envelope, a seal and a glass exhaust tube having a tip projecting outwardly from the seal. Such lamps are often mounted in a base by providing within the base a hard ceramic cement that extends about the seal and the relatively fragile tip. The hard cement has the advantageous property of being able to prevent significant movement of the lamp with respect to the base and of being able to function in this manner without impairment by the high temperatures of lamp operation. A problem that arises with this type of mounting is that the cement, during curing and during lamp cycling, develops relatively high forces on the tip as a result of thermal expansion and contraction slightly different from that of the seal and tip. The actual motion of the cement with respect to the tip may be extremely small, e.g., only three millionths of an inch in some lamps, but the resulting force on the small tip even under these conditions can be quite high, e.g., can produce pressures exceeding 5000 psi. Such force can crack the relatively fragile tip, thereby ruining the lamp.